We've all heard the story of the "40 acres and a mule" promise to former slaves. It's a staple of black history lessons, and it's the name of Spike Lee's film company. The promise was the first systematic attempt to provide a form of reparations to newly freed slaves, and it was astonishingly radical for its time, proto-socialist in its implications. In fact, such a policy would be radical in any country today: the federal government's massive confiscation of private property -- some 400,000 acres -- formerly owned by Confederate land owners, and its methodical redistribution to former black slaves. What most of us haven't heard is that the idea really was generated by black leaders themselves.

It is difficult to stress adequately how revolutionary this idea was: As the historian Eric Foner puts it in his book, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, "Here in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, the prospect beckoned of a transformation of Southern society more radical even than the end of slavery." Try to imagine how profoundly different the history of race relations in the United States would have been had this policy been implemented and enforced; had the former slaves actually had access to the ownership of land, of property; if they had had a chance to be self-sufficient economically, to build, accrue and pass on wealth. After all, one of the principal promises of America was the possibility of average people being able to own land, and all that such ownership entailed. As we know all too well, this promise was not to be realized for the overwhelming majority of the nation's former slaves, who numbered about 3.9 million.

Try to imagine how profoundly different the history of race relations in the United States would have been had this policy been implemented and enforced; had the former slaves actually had access to the ownership of land, of property; if they had had a chance to be self-sufficient economically, to build, accrue and pass on wealth.

At some level, Gates actually understands capitalism and the ownership and protection of property as the best way to help people prosper. I wish he would explain this to his pal Obama.

The true freedom of slaves didn’t happen until almost a hundred years later in 1963 ... and it was a Republican that did it. The Democrats held on to slavery with that “Separate but Equal” nonsense plus that segregation stuff. The black population votes Democrat that kept them in slavery and to a religion that sold them into it.

6
posted on 01/09/2013 6:25:06 PM PST
by SkyDancer
(Live your life in such a way that the Westboro church will want to picket your funeral.)

The actual, amazing untold story here is that WITHOUT government forced redistribution by 1880 blacks owned 10% of the land in the south-—this coming from people who had been in chains a mere 15 years earlier. That is an astounding record.

Yep. Some of my ancestors were burned out of AL during Reconstruction for resisting. (they were not slave owners, but owned property) Those were evil corrupt times that are not clearly understood by most because history books do not cover the reality of what happened then.

LS: "The actual, amazing untold story here is that WITHOUT government forced redistribution by 1880 blacks owned 10% of the land in the south..."

Thanks for your post.

Good farmland of "40 acres and a mule" in today's terms is more-or-less $200,000 ($100k to $400k depending on location, location, location).

$200,000 invested at an (optimistic) 5% annual return generates annual income of $10,000. In other words, annual government welfare payments of $10,000 per family equate to the present value of "40 acres and a mule".

Today's annual welfare costs total around $1 trillion of which perhaps 40% goes to descendants of slaves (40 million), which means their per capita welfare costs are around $10,000 per year. Even if we (falsely) assume all slave descendants receive government assistance, and an average family size of three (mother and two children), then welfare costs $30,000 per family per year, or three times the value of "40 acres and a mule".

In short, it would have been vastly cheaper for the Federal government in 1865 (or even today!) to simply buy abandoned farmland, and give it away to former slaves, on the one and only condition that they, or their descendants, would make no further welfare claims on any government agency.

The biggest social problem in this nation is how to create a nurturing environment for the 5th and 6th generation offspring of single women so these children are not condemned to the perpetual cycle of poverty and dependence. In our current progressive culture these children will not develop the skills and self discipline to compete in normal society nor do they have the role models to show them an alternative path. Over the past 50 years we’ve proven academic white papers, bloated government bureaucracies, rhetoric from community organizers, boatloads of government money and government imposed affirmative action will not break the self perpetuating cycle.

We could give every black person in America a reparations check for $200,000 today. In five years most of the residents of the progressive plantation would be mired in poverty demanding another check. Eric Holder says he wants a frank conversation on race. Let’s ask Eric what he proposes to do about the cultural problem that is holding his people down.

Soul of the South: "We could give every black person in America a reparations check for $200,000 today. In five years most of the residents of the progressive plantation would be mired in poverty demanding another check."

I understand your points and agree. My only point here is that compared to what we do now, "40 acres and a mule" -- whether literal or figurative -- would be not only vastly cheaper, but also more effective. How do they say it?

Give a man a fish and you make him dependent and a dependable Democrat voter.

Teach a man to fish, and he'll always find employment, but there's no telling how he'll vote.

Help a man buy his own fishing boat, and he's now a businessman you can depend on to vote Republican.

Your stats are right, but there are a lot of flaws with the whole process. First, Lincoln deliberately did not define the Rebs as foreign enemies or traitors meaning that legally he could not confiscate their land. There were not vast unoccupied fertile lands just "out there" for the freedmen.

Second, as we have seen with courts, it doesn't matter what the agreement with the freedmen or their descendants---some would still seek reparations or end up on welfare.

Last, as I showed they didn't NEED free land--- they just needed an equal chance before the law and they would get land just as whites did.

Forty acres and a mule was not needed---just fair enforcement of the law.

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